Project SnowBlind

[JonU]

Quick pic of the motherboard and RAM, I brought it down to the school with me to test out the studio that is in the library and see how everything works. I think I'll be bringing the completed build down to get some nice pictures, but I'll need to remember to bring my own camera. Nothing against the school's stuff, but my gear is a bit better than what they have at the moment.

 

[JonU]

The case came in today and apparently I was slightly drunk when ordering stuff, cause I got the non window version. I guess this frees me up to make the window however big I want to now It will be more work than I had initially planned but after seeing how Paul did his window replacement I don't think it should be too difficult.

[Conrad310]

The case came in today and apparently I was slightly drunk when ordering stuff, cause I got the non window version. I guess this frees me up to make the window however big I want to now It will be more work than I had initially planned but after seeing how Paul did his window replacement I don't think it should be too difficult.

Not at all His video is not step by step, but it won't be a hard thing to do. Looking forward to seeing it though!

[JonU]

Last night was a long night, but I put the motherboard and PSU into the case so I could get an idea of how I want the cables run. I found that the USB 3.0 cable going to the front USB ports could be a little bit longer. I very nearly screwed up my board trying to get it to reach the way I originally ran the cable. I was trying to make it work the way I wanted and slightly bent one of the pins; fortunately I was able to get it straight and all is good. If I could figure out how the connector comes apart I would seriously consider making a longer cable so i can run it where I want. Right now it drops down and across the back of the case in plain view without the drive cages installed. I'll end up making the main board cable shorter, the CPU cable longer, and I'm not certain on the PCI power yet. I'll also have to make a SATA power cable since I don't have the space for a right angle SATA power connector. Which means I need to do some looking around for power connectors. Here are a few crappy pics from my cell phone. I was over at my friend's house a couple days ago and forgot my DSLR again.

 

Here you can see how the cable for the front USB header drops down along the back panel, if i try to run it up along the top and drop it down like i did with the others, it is about an inch short to keep it from pulling on the connector. I'll also be going back and redoing the sleeving on the front panel connectors you see on the bottom right of the board.

 

Here the USB cable is even more obvious. The SSD will be on that black tray (thinking I'll try painting it white even though it can't be seen) and there isn't much space between it and the side panel. This is why I need a straight SATA power plug. The 8 pin CPU power cable is running straight across the backside up to the top. What I plan on doing is running it along the bottom and then up the side and around.

 

I haven't pulled the CPU or GPU out of my current computer just yet and probably won't until I get all the sleeving done since I still need a desktop during the build. Currently all I'm waiting on are the crimpers and sleeving which should be getting here tomorrow along with 50' of grey wire. I thought I had ordered 50' of white as well, but apprently I didn't, so I'm going to look around at the local stores to see if I can find some white stranded 18GA wire. Anyways, here is a pic of the cpu cooler. I think this weighs as much as my Bitspower full mobo block for the Z97 Impact.

 

I'm also wondering if a 120mm radiator would fit on the rear fan location. What I'm planning on at the moment is a 420 in the top and a 280 in the front. I haven't ordered those just yet, but i should have some time as I get the cables made to get them ordered.

[JonU]

A minor setback today. I was cutting the sleeping off the main 24 pin connector when I accidentally cut 3 wires. Fortunately nothing major and SeaSonic came through for me. I sent an email earlier today asking if they had a pinout diagram. I just got a response a little while ago and they sent me the diagram This should make things much easier now. I can pull all the pins and start from scratch. I went ahead and kept working on the sleeving for some practice. What I think I'm going to do is half grey and half white alternating back and forth. Here is what my sleeving looks like so far. I do have to say that using paracord is much easier for heatshrinkless results than the other stuff I had.

 

I have also have started fitting in the other pieces from my old computer.

 

 

 Finally, I ordered a Thermaltake Dr. Power II power tester. I really don't want to risk frying my mobo or GPU because I messed up the pins. I also have a second 16GB RAM kit and a 500GB add coming as well. It should all be here Tuesday or Wednesday.

[JonU]

Got the stuff in this evening. I'll be back to work again once I finish my Final tomorrow. Here is a little peak of what I have done:

[JonU]

Apparently, I continually forget to add the wire to my orders. So I've put in yet another order for 100' of white wire that probably won't be here until next week. But, it will give me time to get my tubing runs figured out. I'll be using soft tubing for now and going back and doing hard lines in a few weeks when I swap out the radiators for ones sized for 140mm fans. I'm also going to use the time to get my OS installed and make sure everything is working properly. Not sure how much I'll get done this weekend since I have training all weekend, but we'll see. I hope to make the tubing look a little bit better than it currently does. It criss-crosses all over. Anyways, I'll update you guys on Sunday with what progress I have made.

 

What do you guys think? This is how I'm planning on doing the wiring once it gets here:

 

[JonU]

No new pics since I don't want to show off the unsleeved mess of cables, but I have been able to get it leak tested and started working on getting things overclocked. I'm pretty happy with my 980, I haven't had to add much voltage (+18mv) to get it running stable with what feels like a great OC (i honestly don't know for sure). Running GPU-Z in the background while running Firestrike has seen a max value of 1570mhz in the log file and I have the memory running at 8200mhz stable Less impressive in my opinion is my 4790k. I don't want to throw more than 1.3v at it and with that being my max limit, the highest I can get is 4.7Ghz, but the highest I can go and stay stable under a stress test of both the CPU and GPU is 4.6Ghz. I guess it's not that bad, but I was hoping for something closer to 4.8Ghz. Temps are staying great too, the CPU hits around 80* during the stress test, and I have yet to see the GPU exceed 55*. Anyways here are a few screenshots of my Firestrike score and I also benchmarked my SSDs with 3dMark Anvil.

 

 

 

 

[CostcoSamples]

Love the white theme!  If you find the tiny motherboard fans are too noisy, check out what I did on my Sabertooth board:

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/417008-white-define-r5-build/

[JonU]

Love the white theme!  If you find the tiny motherboard fans are too noisy, check out what I did on my Sabertooth board:

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/417008-white-define-r5-build/

 

I'll look into it, but so far they haven't bothered me too much.

 

 

I also finally got all of my sleeving supplies in the mail earlier this week and today I started on the PCI-e cables. I just completed my first one and I'm pretty happy with the results. I wasn't too happy with the quality of the crimps on the seasonic cables since three of the cables pulled out and left the pin in the connector. fortunately I was able to find a small screw that I could use to force the pins out. This obviously destroyed the pin, but since they are being replaced it didn't really matter much. Here are a few pics of the process.